News of the death of the former Japanese prime minister is dominating Chinese social media today. The communist government’s embassy in Tokyo did issue condolences. Yet the sentiment on the internet, unlike that voiced by most others around the world, is not one of condemnation or shock or sympathy, but rather one of glee. 

Weibo, the Chinese Communist Party-controlled platform, is filled with comments rejoicing in the attack that killed Shinzo Abe. One post says it is fitting that Abe should atone with his life for Japan’s invasion of China just a day after the 85th anniversary of the start of the hostilities in 1937. That has garnered, at last check, 210,000 likes. Another — “Let the celebrations begin” — had more than 150,000 likes within 30 minutes. 

On TikTok, the short-form video hosting platform owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, the commentary is no less callous. “I have a 20-year-old bottle of wine that I have been saving for the right time. Tonight is the night,” reads one comment. “Chinese New Year celebrations came early this year,” reads another. “I hope the shooter is safe,” a third says. 

Abe had long been a target of Chinese nationalists. He piqued the Chinese Communist Party while he was in office and in the years that followed, particularly in his push for Japan to increase its defense spending and revise its pacifist constitution. He was also the driving force behind the formation of Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, designed to counter Beijing. 

In 2013, Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine for Japan’s war dead drew criticism from China’s communists. Chinese newspapers described his visit as paying homage to “devils” and warned that China could crush “provocative militarism.” His video call this March with Free China’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, again ruffled feathers.

Beijing was then quick to remind of ostensible crimes that Japan had committed against the island democracy when Japan was a colonial power. As Chinese social media rejoice in Abe’s death, the Chinese Communist Party is quickly mobilizing its propaganda machine to muddle the message and feign compassion.

When news hit the wires that Abe was shot, but before he perished, China’s foreign ministry said that it was “shocked” by the attack and hoped that he would “recover soon.” The Chinese embassy in Tokyo later offered its condolences to Abe’s family, with a nod to his contributions to Sino-Japanese ties during his time as prime minister.

On Weibo and Twitter, a Chinese journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Communist Party’s Global Times, Hu Xijin, wrote that he feels “sympathy for Abe.” His social media post had 86,000 likes in the span of one hour.

A professor of international relations at Renmin University, Jin Canrong, a close advisor to Xi Jinping who once suggested China would be ready to seize Taiwan by force in 2027, on his Weibo channel urged “respect for life, rational patriotism, rational speech.”

This is not the first time that Chinese social media has disclosed the depths of Red China’s hostility — and, as it is the party that controls the platforms, such posts speak volumes.  

Last year, Weibo posts from party-linked accounts mocked India’s Covid crisis. One post shared a photo of the Chinese Long March-5B rocket carrier taking off for its space mission alongside pictures of cremation pyres burning in India under the watch of people in hazmat suits.

“China lighting a fire versus India lighting a fire,” the caption read. The post came from an account affiliated with the Central Commission for Political and Legal Affairs, a powerful party organ responsible for the country’s courts and law enforcement bodies. 

It has been said that if people disclose their character, they are to be believed the first time. Communist China has continued to offer glimpses of its character alongside its ambitions. It has done so again today on the death of Shinzo Abe. Surely, by now, it is to be believed.